Friday, February 13, 2015

Recognizing Enoch Poor

I've commented before on the various unsung, or at least less well known, officers of the Revolution.  One was Enoch Poor, honored here by a statue in Hackensack, NJ.


Poor, a veteran of the French and Indian War, was made a Brigadier General in 1777, fought at Saratoga in the Revolution and with General John Sullivan on his campaign to subjugate Native Americans, culminating in the Battle of Newtown.  He died in 1780 from typhus; the Continental army surgeon James Thacher, noted the death in his journal as dying from "putrid fever." (Some continue to argue he was killed in an illegal duel and that was "covered up.") Washington wrote of him to Congress that ""He was an officer of distinguished merit, one who as a citizen and soldier had every claim to the esteem and regard of his country."